The Conversation Continues

What has United Synagogue been doing in the last month since the opening of its Centennial Celebration: The Conversation of the Century?

We have been going through evaluations, developing a schedule of webinars that will feature speakers and resources from the conference, and, simultaneously, laying the groundwork for our next convention. We have been delighted by the calls and emails from hundreds of attendees with a single message: "Give us more!"

The feedback from our sessions tells us why. After many of the workshops during our conference, people filled out short questionnaires to note what they learned, what they'll do next, and what additional questions remain. The enthusiastic responses - including the one below that diagrams someone's understanding of Dr. Erica Brown's session on Change, Vision and the Growth Mindset - showed that workshops sparked not only ideas but also more questions.

In fact, out of 652 responses from 39 workshops, there were 540 answers to the question, "What is one 'next step' you're taking after this session?" What did people say? Most of the answers fell into two categories: "Bring back this idea to my shul," and "Continue the conversation with my board."

We all know, though, what can happen to a motivated person who comes back from a conference with a great idea. The reality of leadership, resistance to change, and, frankly, day-to-day business gets in the way of following through.

For that reason, here's what United Synagogue will be doing for the next few months. On a regular basis, we will provide you with information that focuses on a topic from one of our workshops. We'll have links to the presentation if they're available, resources related to the topic and a question or series of questions for group discussion. We want to share the ideas and resources from the Conversation of the Century in the bite-sized pieces that will help you, your board or your congregation create a shared understanding, vision, goals and action.

Cross posted on www.USCJ100.org

Break A Leg

I used to volunteer to be assistant director for our synagogue's biannual musical. Having minored in theatre in college, I knew the three priorities for the position: 1) Take copious notes during rehearsals to ensure that decisions one day turn into actions by the next. 2) Get the cast and crew what they need to work together seamlessly. 3) Keep people's spirits up.

A synagogue play is supposed to be a community-building experience. But one year, everyone was miserable. For many reasons, this particular production brought out in 50 adults their worst high school drama behavior, from prima donna tantrums and behind-the-back whispering to sneaking out for a sip of scotch. Ticket sales were slow, no one wanted to rehearse, and the group's motivation was lower than a prison chain gang. The director and producer and I were chronically depressed. 

To cheer up my two beleaguered friends, I wrote an email with the subject line, "How to Produce a Synagogue Play." I gave ten tips that included things like, "Remove dialogue and choral numbers and replace with solos," and "Give 40 performances so every cast member gets the lead at least once." The insider jokes lifted our spirits, I assumed no one else would see it, and we got to opening night.

To my horror, the director had put my email in the printed program! She thought it was lighthearted and funny, and made a great final page. I was overcome with dread, waiting for cast members to take it personally and confront me for humiliating them publicly. I made plans for the next congregation I would join after I was ejected from this one. But no one said anything. They had felt the same way, and understood the good-natured humor.

Move forward 20 years. I am one of the lead professionals producing United Synagogue's Centennial Celebration. My role has felt like being the assistant director of the biggest, most complicated synagogue play ever attempted. It has been exciting, terrifying, and fun. Our team learned how to work together, and after a year of nearly continual communication, we can almost read each other's minds. I can honestly report that I never felt the need to write a tongue-in-cheek email to boost morale, although there was one time when I nearly crafted a fake press release that changed the date of the founding of United Synagogue so we'd have an extra year to plan.

The program guide has already gone to print, but in my own tradition of "how-to" commentary, I now offer my advice on....

HOW TO PRODUCE A SUCCESSFUL EVENT

Tip #1. Celebrate a 100-year anniversary. Really, it makes choosing a theme a breeze. 

Tip #2. Set realistic goals. It will help you make complicated decisions about your space needs. The risk is that if you surpass your expectations, you might have to walk 600 people from your hotel to another one seven blocks away for Friday night dinner and religious services. (The same risk applies to goals for the number of exhibitors. If you're not careful, you will have to convince them that the rafters outside the restrooms are prime space.) 

Tip #3. Boost attendance by holding your event during a secular four-day holiday weekend like Columbus Day. The risk is that the city will host a marathon at the same time. But, you'll enjoy the hunt as you help people search for rooms when your hotel runs out of them. 

Tip #4. If you encourage people to present workshops, be prepared for an enthusiastic response from the community. Then refer to the risks in Tip #2 about space. 

Tip #5. Don't be afraid to assign staff members to the core steering committee who are already too busy to work on one more thing. Look at it like baseball players warming up for their next at bat by swinging two or three times the weight of a regular bat. Those professionals will appreciate how light their regular work load feels when the event is over! 

Tip #6. One month out from the event, turn over 1,000 details that the core team set in motion to about 40 additional staff and volunteers. They'll thank you, too, for the reason detailed in tip #5. 

Tip #7. Look for chair people who are serial synagogue presidents. They are human beings with a strange genetic inability to run away from responsibility, weekly meetings, mind-numbing trivial detail, whining, conflict, political intrigue and constant pressure to raise or save money. 

Tip #8.  Engage an event planner. It's worth every penny to be able to say, "Our event planner is responsible for that." 

Tip #9.  Identify target audiences and ask "connectors" to keep reaching out to them. Avoid counting how many people have registered. Instead, look for who is not registered...yet. In the end, it will make your CEO extremely happy that your assurance, "Everything is going as planned," turns out to be true. Remind him/her of how right you were when it's time for your annual performance review.  

Tip #10. About your family: Remember that they won't understand the new words you'll throw around, like, "room blocks," "exposure," "values engineering," "MOS interviews," and "VOG (voice of God)." Tape a photo of yourself to your refrigerator so they'll remember what you look like if you spend more time in your office than your kitchen for a year. Thank them profusely for their patience with your continual distraction. Maybe even post your thanks publicly on your blog.

With more than 1,000 participants, the Conversation of the Century will take center stage in the Conservative Jewish community when it "opens" on Friday. To the hundreds of performers, speakers, volunteers, and staff who will bring it to life, I say thank you, and, as they say in the theatre, "Break a leg!"

Living Room Learning as Relational Judaism

I spent the last six weeks deeply connecting and then retreating from community. First, I intensively trained several boards and leadership teams, then headed away for two weeks of relaxation.

I spent the final days of my vacation in northern Virginia, in a cable TV-free farmhouse overlooking the Shenandoah River and the majestic mountains blanketed in snow, with some of my family and a dog named Rufus.

It was in the mountains, separated from all community, that I thought about this well-known text from the Mishna quoting Hillel, (Avot 2:5):

הלל אומר אל תפרוש מן הצבור ואל תאמן בעצמך עד יום מותך ואל תדין את חברך עד שתגיע למקומו ואל תאמר דבר שאי אפשר לשמוע שסופו להשמע ואל תאמר לכשאפנה     אשנה שמא לא תפנה:

Hillel said: Do not withdraw from the community. And do not trust in yourself until the day of your death. And do not judge your fellow until you have put yourself in their place. Do not say something which cannot be heard (on the assumption) that eventually it will be heard. And do not say, 'When I have time I shall study,' perchance you will never have time.

[AJWS translation and Hebrew text from On1Foot]

I picture this as an illustration of the power of relationships to both empower us and challenge us.

For me, it is spatial. I envision concentric circles of communal involvement, with the most involved people at the center and least involved in the outside areas. The instruction from Hillel is this: Don't allow yourself to be drawn away from the gravitational pull of the community.

It's the quote that helps us argue in favor of synagogue affiliation, Jewish study, volunteering, and leadership.

But the reality is that affiliation and participation numbers among all religious groups in America are shrinking. One third of adults under age 30 identify themselves as having "no religion," and the number of unaffiliated adults rose from 15% to 20% in five years, according to a Pew Research Study released in October 2012. Leaders of our Conservative kehillot complain of decreasing participation in a myriad of programs, and are always on the lookout for new ideas that will bring people from the periphery into the synagogue buildings that are supposed to house the center of community. 

In a Synagogue 3000 report last year, Dr. Ron Wolfson gave this advice about how to approach decreasing engagement:

We have to move from a synagogue of programs targeting different populations to a deepening relationship between the synagogue and their members...The best way to root people in the life of the congregation is through relationships. If we don't people will drop their memberships, and that's a big problem.

What Wolfson and others have called, "relational Judaism," challenges leaders to stop imagining that the gravitational pull of programs will bring people towards the center, and, instead, cement bonds throughout the community based on sharing experiences and building relationships. Here are examples from some of our kehillot: 

• The vice president of a 300-member congregation in Pennsylvania began inviting two or three families per month to his home for Shabbat, with the goal of having Shabbat dinner, or at least making the invitation, to every person in his community by the time he finished his presidency.
• "Guess Who's Coming to Shabbas?" - the relationship-building initiative organized by Debbie Albert of Temple Sinai in Dresher, PA, with the goal of getting all 500 member families to host or be a guest at Shabbat dinner, has had almost half the congregation involved already. 
• The president of a 150-member congregation organized a "listening campaign," asking people to host "town halls" in homes so that she could hear what they cared about in their community. In six months, every member came to a town hall and met someone new in the process.
• "Living Room Learning," offered at Congregation Torat El in Oakhurst, NJ, where Rabbi Aaron Schonbrun creates a Jewish learning experience for any 10 people who organize a meeting in someone's home in the community.
• The Sulam for Emerging Leaders rabbis, trainers and participants in 30 kehillot - more than 250 people - are learning together right now, having Shabbat dinner and then opening up the circle of relationships to involve more people in the experience.

These examples put the possibility of engagement everywhere, not in the middle of concentric circles that increase towards the center. Relational Judaism reverses the imaginary spatial diagram of community.

Instead of warning people about moving away from the center, Hillel's injunction speaks directly to leaders who think they are at the center: Don't YOU separate yourself from the community. Remember that the community is not where you are, it is all around you. Your responsibility is to move throughout it. Create connections. Build relationships without an expectation of what will come next.

Through a series of conferences in the coming months, (March 11 and 17 in United Synagogue's Mid-Atlantic district and April 14 in our Northeast district),  we will be looking for examples of relational Judaism by highlighting visionary strategies of engagement and learning.

And it will be our Centennial Celebration, "The Conversation of the Century," in October 2013, that will be United Synagogue's movement-wide relationship building experience. Watch for online and in person conversations that are beginning now.